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Labour HQ defunds Corbyn’s staff by half – he’s paying some himself

‘Short money’ (named after the politician who instituted the system, Edward Short) is the name of the state funding to opposition parties to enable them to conduct the business of being an opposition.

As the largest party in opposition, Labour receives around £5.5 million in Short money for the current financial year – plus £789,000 specifically for the purpose of funding the office of the Labour leader.

In September last year, I sat through an excruciating session at Labour’s annual Conference, listening to the party’s treasurer patting herself and the platform on the back over the abundant condition of the party’s debt-free finances – ironically with no acknowledgement whatever of the fact that the party owes that state of affairs to the massive surge in the Corbyn-supporting membership, which now takes the annual income for the party to around £50 million.

The Labour Party is not ‘short’ of cash. So there is no excuse for what you’re about to read.

There have been rumours for some time that the Blairite-controlled Labour HQ is withholding resources from Jeremy Corbyn’s office, to such an extent that he is unable to pay for the usual complement of staff to run it.

Those rumours intensified when the release of Corbyn’s tax return there has been speculation that he is spending his own money to fund salaries for some of his staff and this has also been mentioned as fact by other sources.

Now, the SKWAWKBOX can disclose that those rumours are correct. A senior Labour source has confirmed to this blog that Corbyn’s office is being forced to run with only half the staff that Ed Miliband had.

It appears that the Labour right has little confidence that Corbyn’s leadership will fail on its own, properly and normally resourced, so they – and we are talking headquarters staff here, according to this blog’s source, not the NEC – are taking extremely direct action to try to make sure it fails.

This means a situation in which Labour ‘right-whingers’ who care only about their own position and careers and not in the least for the fact that the country desperately needs a real alternative to the Tories:

are relentlessly sniping at Corbyn and undermining him and his team to every ‘journalist’ who will listen over every assumed or manufactured mistake and

deliberately underfunding his office by half in order to have more ammunition

The most senior Labour Party staffer is Iain McNicol. The senior Labour source lays the blame for this ridiculous situation squarely at his door.

McNicol and those aligned with him are deliberately setting up Labour to fail. They have betrayed the Party, its principles, its members and the tens of millions of people who need it – and they have no place near the Party, let alone running its HQ.

If you are a Labour member, make sure that your next branch/CLP meeting moves no-confidence in McNicol – and demands that Jeremy Corbyn’s staff is funded to at least the same level as the hapless Miliband’s was.

And that Corbyn – with no interference or limitation – chooses the personnel who will complete the team that he and his vision deserve.

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Shocked – there is nothing worse than what Labour HQ are continuing to do to Corbyn. Beginning to think he would be better off forming a Peoples Party – the Labour name is not now something to be proud of.

We all know about the purges, for far too many still going on with quasi judicial hearings for members accused of being “abusive” with flimsy evidence to put it mildly. Then we also knew that the members money was being used to outspend individual members who were forced to court to try and keep their voting rights. And we’ve all also seen the tweets and press interviews dripping with malignancy. The leadership challenges, the dirty tricks andvsmear campaigns against CLPs and individuals, and the collusion with well known tory broadcasters in coups against Corbyn, weve seen it all, or do we thought.

Given this background it shouldn ‘t have the power to shock, but it does. They really, really shouldn’t have done that. That is going too far. The staff might have upset the 500,000 members that have joined to support Corbyn with the dirty tricks and coups, but this direct attack on the leaders office will prove the final straw.

It will also irrevocably stain all those who have very publicly stood against Corbyn. I doubt there will be any comeback possible for the staff or the NEC or the PLP. They have all been part of it, whether they try to claim no knowledge or intent. They have all been in an open conspiracy, and are all guilty of allowing staff and colleagues to get out of hand. This direct attack on Corbyn’s ability to perform his duties is the final unforgivable act of aggression and insubordination. Its time to get our party back.

I havent thought through the implications this may have for me being supported by my branch if I stand for Cllr in the forthcoming local elections, but publish and be damned! I have been a member of the Party for many years and silently tolerated the Blair years and the Milliband years nevertheless throwing my weight behind the local campaigns and being thought of as a curious little rebel. Then Corbyn arrived and things started to change for the better. People joined who had previously shunned the Party for being too moribund and conservative. At last I felt relaxed and could be heard without ridicule. The Party felt like it belonged to us now, and us to it, at last. But there is still a long way to go before the old guard accept defeat. And they hold all the cards. At a recent election of Branch Chair and Secretary it became obvious that a scheme had been devised to get members into the meeting who hadnt attended for years and who left en masse as soon as elections were over! It was a stitch up. Machinations are exposed whereby the NC commands that membership lists can only be held by Branch Chair and Secretary. Even the Membership Secretary isnt allowed it! So sayeth the National Committee and when challenged to take the matter to the Compliance Unit the answer is that they have done so and been advised to refer back to CLP Exec. Exec Committee again is dominated by the right so again it will be a walk over. The stealth of the right knows no bounds and still they go on. So much depends on the right accepting they are wrong but they cant let go. Women’s voices are silenced and young people who might have revived the hope are deterred from coming back once they hear/see what happens in meetings and the vicious backbiting. Faint hearted we arent, but it will be a bitter battle before the hundreds of new members get a chance to say their piece. The witholding of the membership list means they dont even get told when the meetings are! Momentum’s forthcoming conference may set it all on a firmer footing: here’s hoping!

Do stand for election it’s the only hope of trying to gain control back from the right wingers .
Re the membership list , I am not sure re your CLP but our membership Sec DOES hold the membership list for our CLP .
Re not being notified of meetings it may not help much , but it is my understanding that , if your CLP/Branch is using NationBuilder Membersnet/Contact Creator ( Labour Party computer systems ) to communicate with it’s members then you can request from the CLP Sec or Data Controller , confirmation that your email address is on the system and that your preferences are enabled to receive emails . They are obliged by the Data Protection Act to provide this information or suffer the consequences of breaking that act ,( stiff penalties apply inc jail ) .
Should you know of new members then they can request the same info to ensure they don’t miss any meetings .Check your SPAM folder to make sure emails are not going there either.
If your Branch / Clp are using their own computers and not NationBuilder etc to communicate via email with the membership then the same DPA applies re any electronic data held on that computer relating to membership , they also MUST sign the DPA or again they are in contravention of the Act.

This backs up the post on this blog from the weekend about local parties being denied contact details of new members by the national or regional party. More evidence that the party management is sabotaging its own ability to fight elections

The proper officers of a CLP ( Secretary, Vice Chair Membership) always have access to the Member Centre system and can see new members’ personal data. To be frank, I don’t believe what you are claiming.

Recently I received an email from the Labour Party which I mistakenly thought was from Jeremy Corbyn’s office ( I am a new member and totally unaware that such an awful situation existed). I made a small donation and was shocked to receive an email from Ian McNichol. If I had realised that that was where my money was going I would not have donated.
This is a shocking situation. I do not know how Jeremy keeps going. His treatment is the worst case of bullying I have ever witnessed. He is absolutely the leader we need and want. I would like to know what I can do to help Jeremy directly. Is there somewhere we can send money that can be directly used by him? There are many of us and small donations by his supporters will provide a good support for him.

Yes I got the same begging letter from McN myself and ignored it , only because the email address it came from was from HQ . I ignore all requests now from HQ and Region only respond directly to JC and his office . It’s easy to send money directly to JC office , just send the cheque in the post as a donation.
Many new members may not realise it but 99% of your membership goes to central HQ with 1% being sent back/retained by your CLP It’s a crap situation and it needs a motion put to conference this yr to change it .

You are “shocked” that when you received an email from the Leader of the Labour Party asking for a donation, the money was paid to the Labour Party. Have I got that right? Where did you think the money was going? Into Corbyn’s personal bank account?

Is there nothing we, the believers in real Labour, can do against this monstrous injustice being inflicted on Corbyn. He is the first labour leader who speaks real labour values unlike the greasy-polers who are striving to bring him down. Diana fenney.

I think the article stated that JC tax return indicated that he was paying for staff costs out of his own pocket. Perhaps you could follow this through by contacting his office to confirm this and the reason why ?

Support the democratically elected leader.
Get behind him.
When I watched PMQs I was appalled at the amount of Labour Mps who appear to talk over their leader…are seen on live TV to be on their phones..
They look like petulant children.
I am no fan of the Conservatives but they do a better job of faking a United party.
Some may not like their leader but at least they listen politely.

Of course he makes mistakes. He’s not a deity, he’s human, and a damned sight more humane than most politicians past or present. The basic fact is that by openly disrespecting not only the PERSON but also the OFFICE of leader, the NEC are disrespecting the will of the majority of the membership. Labour Party funds are not the personal accounts of NEC members any more than they are of Joe Bloggs down the road, they are funds which belong to the ORGANISATION i.e. the entire membership, and if that organisation as a whole has elected a particular individual to the office of leader then, by implication, the majority of that membership wish that leader to be supported and properly funded by Party officials.

This money appears to be allocated specifically by a Resolution of the House. In fact according to the paper in the House of Commons Library, the amount allocated for the leader appears to be a specific allocation, identified within the payment. Is it even legal for the Labour Party HQ to block any of this payment?

So can I ask the editor to please look into how we as members and supporters of the democratically elected leader can make a donation to his office that can be used specifically to support the work of that office?
I know the rules are probably tight and that donations just go to central funds to be spent according to the decided budget. So I would like a real assurance that if I donate to enable the leader’s office and the front bench team to better function the money actually goes to that purpose.
I am concerned, many of us are that the central party does not appear to be spending sufficient resources on promotion of many of the agreed polices of the party, for example the 10 pledges.
Can you research this for us?
Many thanks

Other than an idly posed – and unanswered – question (not even an assertion) in the Huffington Post article, I challenge you to give me one shred of evidence to support your claim that the tax return indicates that Corbyn is using his salary to pay his staff.

The tax return literally does not show that at all. Nobody in Corbyn’s team, when explaining the return, .has been reported as even claiming that this is the case.

But if you know better, and have some evidence, I challenge you to provide it, here in this forum.

I have looked at not only the summary of the tax return but the whole return. Nowhere in it is there a claim for paying staff. There isn’t even any box to enter such a claim into because, not being tax deductible, such an expense would be totally irrelevant to a tax return.

Re you comment, “Take it up with Paul Watch”. Why aren’t YOU curious to check the plausibility of Paul Waugh’s idle question? You are pinning your whole article on Waugh’s question – a single, tentatively phrased queston that goes nowhere – yet are uncurious to test whether there is anything in it.

When I ask YOU – the writer of this article – to show me how Corbyn’s tax return supports your theory, you literally cannot give me an answer.

It might be the case that Corbyn pays for staff out of his salary. I’m not saying it isn’t. What I’m raising with you is the very specific suggestion that his paying his staff out of his salary is evidenced by his tax return. Because it really, really isn’t evidenced by that. It just isn’t.. My concern is that your article quotes no sources to justify your points. Perhaps aware of your lack of sources, you make a reference to evidence being there to see in a tax return. I can see that you know really that you don’t know how to support this particular claim. So instead you say, “it must be correct because otherwise, why would Paul Waugh have mentioned it?” Well, it you look at the Paul Waugh article – which clearly you have done – the couple of sentences that surmise this are said without any backup or corroboration at all. I am sorry to keep on at you about this specific point, and I appreciate that you have had the decency to post my questions to you. But I really do think that it is poor of you to have claimed something so specific – that the tax return demonstrates a certain thing – when you actually have no idea whether it does or doesn’t. (And I can assure you, as someone who knows fair amount about tax returns, that it really, really, really does not!). Anyway, I’ve no more to say on this. Thank you for replying, at any rate.

Brendan, it’s a side issue and not crucial to the main point. It’s already taken more time than it’s worth. The tax return was mentioned by more than Waugh but the other sources can’t be named. It’s not that important and doesn’t change a thing about the main issue. Can we move on?

There is nothing on the JC tax return to indicate that he’s paying staff from his salary and “pension”, and it wasn’t Paul Waugh who said there was – it was Skwawkbox..

I should add that I have no interest in Labour infighting, but find it troubling that one who holds others to account for their failings (real and/or imagined) should be so unwilling to admit errors in his / her own writing.

“Moving on” would leave unresolved the issue which Mr O’Brien and I have raised. You made a firm statement that the tax return showed that JC was paying staff out of salary.That isn’t true, but you won’t admit it. Why on earth not? There’s no shame in admitting to an occasional mistake.

Furthermore if a checkable part of the story is untrue what are we to make of the uncheckable parts?

As you pointed out, Graham, the tax info published is only a summary. Perhaps others have seen the whole thing and there’s some kind of deduction for it. Other sources have made the same point so I’m satisfied there’s a reason for it. Don’t know beyond that and don’t have time to chase an irrelevant detail. Move on and stop sealioning.

“Those rumours intensified when the release of Corbyn’s tax return showed that he is spending his own money to fund salaries for some of his staff.” toward, to paraphrase

“Perhaps someone has seen something not released regarding JC’s taxes that may show that he is employing people from his salary – but trust me I’m right on this because other anonymous sources have said so.as well”

Which rather begs the question. What has JC published if it’s not a true reflection of his tax return?

BTW, not true that only the summary of the tax return was published. Every page was put on JC’s website. I have read every section of every page. There’s nothing to support this idea that you have put forward. And secondly, if you knew about tax, you’d know there couldn’t be any such information in it as it would be irrelevant. It’s as irrelevant as telling HMRC you have spent your salary on a car, or a holiday or personal masseur.

Correction. Just re-checked and in fact what is published is not the actual tax return but the same information reproduced in several sheets. But if that is the information that is published, the same question applies. How have you made your very specific deduction from that information? Please tell us which page, according to you, supports your claim?

We all know that you cannot support it. If you could, you would have done so by now to shut me up

You made a small change to your article about the £50 million income claim, in acknowledgement of facts that were later brought to your attention. It was to your credit that you did so. Why not make a small change in respect of this now? You can still reference Paul Waugh, but why not say something like, “Since publication of the tax return, there has been speculation that JC pays for salaries out of his own salary. See, for example, Paul Waugh…”. By changing it to that, you would be showing some respect for facts and the principle of making some sort of attempt to verify them before you publish them as such.

After all, I have just had the honesty to retract something I said earlier that I have found out not to be exactly the case. Surely you can do the same?

Sorry. I have just noticed that you did indeed amend your article. By all means ignore my ” final” comment, written when I wrongly believed you were still refusing to amend your article. I appreciate your making the change.

Majority of Labour members joined to support Corbyn!! McNicol as shown he is no Labour supporter when he charged members £25 and blocked others he needs removing asap!
It is this type of person that causes chaos in the party and ensures Corbyn stays out of number 10, McNicol needs to take (puffed up with own importance) Watson & few others with him too, then Corbyn will stand a better chance of getting in No 10.

Irrespective of the reference to JC tax return in this article it also makes reference to a senior Labour MP stating that JC office is run with half the number of staff that Ed Miliband had . Now why is that I wonder ? The article simply adds to the overall irrefutable evidence of the undermining of JC by many elements within the Labour Party ( some such as his Lordship Mandelson admitting to it ) . The power struggle between those in the party who represent the elite ( multi millionaires Sainsbury’s backed Progress Grp etc ) and those who are trying represent the people whom Labour came into existence to support .
I think it would be very difficult indeed for those commentators here obsessed with the tax return to argue against that body of evidence . It maybe worth pointing out that JC has published his tax return but that not one of the Tories have done so in response .
Perhaps they might like to pursue that angle with as much vigour as they have over JC’s tax return here.Maybe they’d like to question Tom Watson over what he has spent the £500,000 donation he has received from those elites ( Max Mosely ) ?
Anyway I am off to do some canvassing for Labour something more useful to help get Labour elected in the May Local elections than obsessing over a Tax return guys .

Skwawkbox now with some reluctance seems to accept this, but is suggesting that there is no smoke without fire in the article linked by the word “showed” in the quoted paragraph above and there may be different entries on the formal document submitted to HMRC.

If he/she really believes this then serious questions are raised as to why the published document doesn’t match the unpublished one. What other entries may be omitted, for example?

(But I’m not raising any conspiracy theories here – I just think Skwawkbox is in a hole and, rather than just admit the error in the article, is continuing to dig.)

“a senior Labour MP stating that JC office is run with half the number of staff that Ed Miliband had”.

Look. That might be true for all I know. But where is the detail in this? No MP source is named. No numbers are stated. Are we talking about a reduction in head count or a reduction in filled posts (there have been several resignations)?

And the issue of the tax return is important because in this article, a ” fact” about the evidence in a tax return is the only verifiable fact that is presented. Yet when asked to back this fact up, the author admits she is unable to do so.

All I am asking for is a smidgen of rigour in an article that is claiming to be reputable journalism.

There’s more rigour here than you’ll find in the mainstream – and the tax return comment is a side issue. The article would stand without it – and you have no right to be privy to sources that asked to remain anonymous. Move on or be marked as a spammer and then none of your comments will get through. Days are too short as it is.

Brenden to have absolute accuracy 100% of the time is not always possible , now I couldn’t care less if the tax return show ABC or even Z , as I said in my last post there is broadly irrefutable evidence of the undermining of JC . This article is but one small piece of it but the overall picture to most people is very clear as to what is happening to JC . Yes you may well win this small battle with the writer but with the range , scope and depth of the internal attacks on JC most people will make the inevitable judgement as to the truth of the matter.
Re rigour then hells bells I’d say I am more likely to believe what I read in some of these independent bloggers, not just this one but a whole range of them , and thanks goodness we have them doing what they do on a voluntary basis with little income or support , than anything the MSM pours out .

This morning, three or four Labour MPs have publicly said that this story is untrue. And those MPs, unlike the one referred to in this article, are not anonymous. So we have MPs speaking in public versus an unnamed MP allegedly speaking in secret and unwilling to put their name against the allegation.

Skwawkbox wants to move on from the exposure of his/her “fact” about JC’s tax return as being completely ungrounded in errr fact, seemingly because real facts are unimportant to him/her.

It’s important, because the staffing shortfall alleged in the article is unverifiable – it may be true, or it may be false. The only “hard fact” was the supposed evidence in the tax return of JC’s personal payments to staff – which is verifiably untrue (unless there are two versions of the tax return) This must have an influence on the credibility of the article as a whole.

When the issue is pressed, threats are made to block those who are commenting – a brave new world indeed.

What I can’t understand is why the error is not just acknowledged as such. I for one would then be happy to move on.

As I said to Brendan, you and he have a tendency to stalk every comment on here, in what looks like an attempt to disrupt the discourse. If at any point you don’t like how I choose to moderate comments on my site, you’re free not to visit. Either way, I won’t allow a small number of people to put the majority off commenting.

On this thread what I’ve done is resolutely (and relatively calmly and politely) question something which was originally posted as a matter of fact which turned out not to be true.

Quite how that would put others off commenting I am unsure.

In any case you have, eventually, acknowledged my point (and Brendan’s) and changed the text to remove the error.

It’s fair enough to say that it’s your decision on who you allow to post what, but if challenging a factual error is to be categorised as disruption, it implies that you would prefer that errors remain unchallenged, and the false picture remain “undisrupted”.

If that is indeed your position so be it, but it would sit uneasily with your “quest for truth” in other matters.

I have to support in particular Graham’s point about threatening to block me and maybe others too. I acknowledge that you haven’t done so. But why should I have to sound grateful for that? Surely freedom of speech is not something that one should feel grateful for being accorded? I have a feeling that the moderator of this forum would be the first to insist on freedom of speech in the Labour Party. Can I suggest – and again, I am trying to be as gentle as I can in doing so – that you take a long, hard look at yourself. You are clearly not beyond redemption because in the end you have listened and responded. But next time, can I suggest you do not intersperse correspondence with suggestions that we are jolly lucky not to be blocked? It’s not a good luck for democrats.

I threatened to block you for dogging what seemed like every other commenter on here. My site, my moderation – and I won’t have people discouraged from commenting because a third party hounds them. Nobody said you’re lucky not to be blocked – I said that I’d block you if you didn’t stop. Those are the breaks and I’m going to keep this a reader-friendly site and not a ‘Labour Facebook Forum’ flamewar.

I’ve just noticed that the text of the article has been changed to omit any claim that the tax return showed that JC was personally paying staff (although I think there are some typos in that para now)

Well yippee doo , such a small insignificant victory whence the bigger picture shows the truth of the matter that there is a sustained undermining of JC to which neither of you two respond , except to bang on about this writers assertion re JC’s tax return.
Come come gentlemen is there not bigger issues here to throw more light upon and the blogs run by the independent non MSM bloggers are the ones to do it .Perhaps it is your intention to discredit this blog , in which case I think so far you have failed , plenty of other excellent articles here all pointing to the plot to run JC out of office , keep trying and failing the but glad to see you are at last moving on .

You don’t agree that things presented in a news article as facts should be genuine facts? If you don’t agree with that, you’ve sunk to the level of the Daily Mail. We have to be better than the Daily Mail.

My complaint was specifically about the claim being made about the tax return. I am happy to note that the author of the article responded to my complaint and agreed to make a change to the article (now made). I have no complaint now with the article’s author – just with contributors to this forum who do not share the author’s ambition to be accurate.

Is that really your strategy? Dismiss people asking for evidence as “right-wing”? Literally untrue, by the way.

Whether or not the mainstream media makes up quotes is entirely irrelevant; I never drew a comparison. I asked for a source on this because literally nobody from Labour – including Corbyn himself – is confirming this.

Also, usually mainstream media have contact with “senior Labour officials” – why would a senior Labour official “leak” this information to a blog rather than the mainstream media themselves? They’d be all over it so it seems unlikely at best.

Nobody said ‘makes up quotes’. I said they use unnamed sources – it’s standard journalistic practice and they would not be expected to reveal them. You have no right to see mine, nor any idea about my connections, so jog on.

Strange thought you guys were moving on , I’d put your motives in the Daily Flail category .Now as regards facts then I make my own judgements on them and take the wider picture based on the pattern of evidence presented by a wide range of information. As I said to you in a earlier post being correct 100% of the time is unrealistic and simplistic . I don’t intend to waste further time debating the issue you have with absolute truth , you will be disappointed in life and with humans if you expect that degree of absoluteness . I suspect we are on opposite sides of the party and thus our views and opinions will disagree .However I for one will be doing my best to ensure JC wins the next election and putting my efforts into helping get Labour elected in the local May elections.

I’,m interested in the allegation that “the Blairite-controlled Labour HQ is withholding resources from Jeremy Corbyn’s office, to such an extent that he is unable to pay for the usual complement of staff to run it.” – What does this mean? Is this referring to the Short money, which I understood was paid directly to the leaders office. Or is it something else. It would be helpful if you could elaborate and give some verifiable detail to this.

Short money goes to the party for the leader’s office, not direct. The information in the article is all that can be released for now. I’m also in the process of verifying whether other information received since is legit

Actually all active clp’s should be demanding that the share of membership fees is fed downward to them. Clp’s are systematically being gentrified. Officers umdergoing skills audits and members referred to as volunteers by labour party staff. Parliamentary and devolved govt elected members encouraged to use only party organisers to run their elections. The americanisation of the labour party is well underway and you can see how that turned out

Excellent, thank you , one only now need look at The Canary to see how it has become more like the Guardian regarding the comments ( must now wash my mouth out after the G word ) Well yippee doo , such a small insignificant victory whence the bigger picture shows the truth of the matter that there is a sustained undermining of JC to which neither of you two respond , except to bang on about this writers assertion re JC’s tax return.